A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was "the best of all possible worlds". Ritchie Robertson goes back into the "long eighteenth century," from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era's original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness - in this world rather than the next - by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to "have the courage to use your own intellect". Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times.&nbsp;

The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

History

Robertson, Ritchie

Europe

Harper

“[Mr. Robertson] is [a] splendid writer, astoundingly versed in European letters and gifted at vividly sketching the views of the “Enlighteners.”… Robertson, armed with a prodigious knowledge of the Enlightenment’s literary output, has captured the tone and spirit of this milieu." -- Wall Street Journal 
Now in paperback, a magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. 
One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was “the best of all possible worlds”. Ritchie Robertson goes back into the “long eighteenth century,” from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. 
Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness – in this world rather than the next – by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument. In so doing Robertson chronicles the campaigns mounted by some Enlightened figures against evils like capital punishment, judicial torture, serfdom and witchcraft trials, featuring the experiences of major figures like Voltaire and Diderot alongside ordinary people who lived through this extraordinary moment. 
In answering the question 'What is Enlightenment?' in 1784, Kant famously urged men and women above all to “have the courage to use your own intellect”. Robertson shows how the thinkers of the Enlightenment did just that, seeking a well-rounded understanding of humanity in which reason was balanced with emotion and sensibility. Drawing on philosophy, theology, historiography and literature across the major western European languages, The Enlightenment is a master-class in big picture history about the foundational epoch of modern times.

Harper-perennial

Franz Kafka is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the last century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. His other three novels, published after his death, helped to found his reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century. Discussing both Kafka's crisis-ridden life and the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson provides an intriguing and accessible look at the life of this fascinating author. Using Metamorphosis as a recurring example, Robertson shows how Kafka's work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed "the death of God."

Kafka: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Focusing on Kafka's sense of Jewish identity and knowledge of Judaism, Robertson elucidates the subtle but profound ways in which Jewish religion and culture influenced Kafka's work.

Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature

Clarendon Press

This book is an erudite literary study of the uneasy position of the Jews in Germany and Austria from the first pleas for Jewish emancipation during the Enlightenment to the eve of the Holocaust. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts, Ritchie Robertson offers a close examination of attempts to construct a Jewish identity suitable for an increasingly secular world. No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history.

The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontents

It is one of the most memorable first lines in all of literature: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin." So begins Kafka's famous short story, The Metamorphosis. Kafka considered publishing it with two of the stories included here in a volume to be called Punishments. The Judgment explores an enigmatic power struggle between a father and son, while In the Penal Colony examines questions of power, justice, punishment, and the meaning of pain in a colonial setting. These three stories are flanked by two very different works. Meditation, the first book Kafka published, consists of light, whimsical, often poignant mood-pictures, while the autobiographical Letter to his Father analyzes his difficult relationship with his father in devastating detail. This new translation by Joyce Crick pays particular attention to the nuances of Kafka's style, and the Introduction and notes by Ritchie Robertson provide guidance to this most enigmatic and rewarding of writers. There is also a Biographical Preface, an up-to-date bibliography, and a chronology of Kafka's life. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

Crick, Joyce

KAFKA, FRANZ

Literary

This is a study of mock-epic poetry in English, French, and German from the 1720s to the 1840s. While mock-heroic poetry is a parodistic counterpart to serious epic, mock-epic poetry starts by parodying epic but moves on to much wider and richer literary explorations; it relies heavily on intertextual allusion to other works, on narratorial irony, on the sympathetic and sometimes libertine presentation of sexual relations, and on a range of satirical devices. It includes well-known texts (Pope's Dunciad, Byron's Don Juan, Heine's Atta Troll) and others which are little known (Ratschky's Melchior Striregel, Parny's La Guerre des Dieux). It owes a marked debt to Italian romance epic (especially Ariosto). The study places these texts in the literary context of the decline of serious epic, which helped mock epic to flourish, and of the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' which questioned the authority of Homer's and Virgil's epics; and it relates their substance to contemporary debates about questions of religion and gender.

Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine

Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and A Hunger Artist: Four Stories (1924). Both collections are included in their entirety in this edition, which also contains other uncollected stories and a selection of posthumously published works that have become part of the Kafka canon. Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, these stories approach human experience at a tangent: a singing mouse, an ape, an inquisitive dog, and a paranoid burrowing creature are among the protagonists, as well as the professional hunger artist. The tales are among Kafka's best-known, haunting and compelling satires on the human condition, on art and artists, and on life itself, which complement his major fictions. Translated by the award-winning Joyce Crick, the book includes an invaluable introduction, notes, and other editorial material by renowned Kafka scholar Ritchie Robertson. There is also a Biographical Preface, an up-to-date bibliography, and a chronology of Kafka's life. This volume completes an Oxford World's Classics set of five Kafka works, in distinctive complementary cover designs. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A Hunger Artist and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

Children's Books

Education & Reference

Entering New York harbor, the young immigrant Karl Rossmann sees the Statue of Liberty, "her arm with the sword stretched upward." This forbidding introduction sets the tone for Kafka's narrative about an innocent European astray in an ultra-modern America that is both a fantasy and an object of social satire. Full of incident and blackly humorous, Kafka's first novel portrays American civilization with horrified fascination, in a biting satire which gives fresh meaning to the term "Kafkaesque." Ritchie Robertson's sensitive and natural translation is both faithful to Kafka's style and highly readable. Moreover, this is the only edition to provide a full introduction and explanatory notes. The introduction explains why Kafka set the novel in America, a country he had never visited, what his sources of information were, and how he distorts his fictional America for satirical purposes. The notes incorporate the most recent Kafka scholarship to illuminate difficult parts of the text. In addition, a Biographical Preface provides an account of Kafka's life. The book also includes an up-to-date bibliography and a chronology. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Man Who Disappeared (Oxford World's Classics)

Humor & Satire

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Books by Robertson, Ritchie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Robertson, Ritchie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790

Kafka: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature

The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontents

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontents

Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine

A Hunger Artist and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

The Man Who Disappeared (Oxford World's Classics)